


my hands and heart for your smile

by wartransmission



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2816759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wartransmission/pseuds/wartransmission
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gon kisses his burned hands with the hope that he'll feel better, a wish left by warm lips on pale skin that he won't have to hurt anymore. Killua thinks to himself, /I would give up more than my hands for you./</p>
<p>[Set in the Greed Island arc, right after they've defeated Razor.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	my hands and heart for your smile

Sometimes, in the quiet moments when they’re alone, Killua thinks it could be a mistake.

_Idiot_ , he thinks to himself, burying his face in the space of his crossed arms propped over his folded legs. Was it bad to want to feel useful? Was it bad to feel  _wanted_? There was nothing wrong with it—or there wouldn’t be, if he weren’t so sentimental about it.

_Would I give up more than my hands?_  he thinks, tries not to cringe when he flexes his fingers and feels lightning-pain shoot up his arms. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do that. So long as there was a plan, opportunities to take, he wouldn’t have to sacrifice anything. Risking everything is stupid. Foolish.

_But I would,_  he thinks with a heavy sigh, peeking over his arms to look at Gon, who’s still resting after that little bit of training Bisky had set upon him. The campfire lights Gon’s face up like sunshine, warm and beautiful, and he feels his heart skip a beat. Asleep, Gon looks like the child he’s supposed to be. Relaxed, trusting, as though they weren’t in a place where they could die at any time if they weren’t careful. Gon looked like everything that he never was; that is, until they met each other.

“Killua..?”

He stifles a jolt of surprise at the call. Casually, so as to let Gon think that he wasn’t looking at his sleeping face, he inclines his head in question. Gon blinks at him, eyes still droopy with exhaustion, until he starts looking around and sees that Bisky isn’t there. “Bisky went to get food,” he says before Gon can ask him, hiding a smile when Gon nods slowly in understanding. “You okay?”

“Tired,” Gon answers intelligibly, eliciting a snort of amusement from him.

“Naturally,” he replies, finally dropping his feet to let them dangle from the rock he’s sitting on. “You kept at it for a while. I’m wondering how many brain cells you’ve managed to kill from being upside down the whole day.”

“My brain can’t die from that,” Gon huffs, rubbing at both of his eyes until he’s looking a little less drowsy. He looks up and the fire flickers with him, bathing his face in oranges and reds like sunset over a wide desert.

He bites his tongue before he can accidentally say any of that out loud. Flicking his tongue over his palate, soothing the sting of sharp teeth over muscle, he says, “Well, if it’s not from being upside down, it’s from being hit on the head by a rock over and over again.”

“Mean!”                                                                                  

“Just saying,” he says with a shrug, grinning a cheeky grin when Gon puffs his cheeks up at him.

Then it’s quiet again, only the soft crackles of fire burning over wood and leaves rustling in the wind being heard if he were to listen.

(And he always is. Listening, that is. He wouldn’t be an efficient hunter if he weren’t observant with his surroundings.)

“Killua,” Gon whispers after a moment of silence, voice softer than before. Gon raises his head and all he sees is an apology waiting to be said, sunkissed throat moving as he struggles to form words.

_Don’t be sorry, Gon._

_You chose me, didn’t you?_

_Don’t be sorry for something like that._

“It’s fine,” he says, waving a hand in dismissal at whatever it is Gon wants to say. The apology is there, he’s sure of it, and he doesn’t want to hear it. An apology would mean that Gon regretted choosing him, that he thinks he should’ve chosen someone else, and he doesn’t want to hear Gon confirming that. He says, wanting the conversation to be over, “I chose to do it. You didn’t force me into it.”

Gon staggers to a stand, a hand on the rock wall for balance, until he starts making his way to where Killua is. “I know that,” Gon tells him, his footsteps soft enough that Killua can barely hear them. “but—”

He frowns, says, “Don’t. I told you, it’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. I chose you, Killua,” Gon says, hands warm on his own, “and I don’t regret that. But…”

_Then why?_  he doesn’t ask, stifling the tremble of his lips when Gon gently cradles his hands. As if he deserves to be treated so gently, as if he didn’t ask for this. He keeps quiet, not wanting to hear his own cracked voice if he were to speak.

“I still hurt you,” Gon says, thumbs tracing over pale bandaged skin. Gon bows his head and he blinks, confused, until he feels something warm pressing against the back of his hand.

_Gon’s lips._

He stutters, asks, “Wh-wh-what did you-”

“Mito-san used to do this for me, whenever I hurt myself somewhere,” Gon explains without skipping a beat, smiling up at him. The place where Gon had kissed him tingles with warmth and he blushes, unused to such gentle displays of affection. Gon explains, “It helps, for me. It doesn’t heal the parts where I’m hurt, but…I feel like I can get better easier when she does it.” Gon looks up and his chest grows tight, painful twinges shooting through his heart at the sight of Gon’s tiny smile. “I don’t know if it’ll work for you, but I wanted to try anyway.”

“Th-that’s stupid,” he snaps in embarrassment, trying to ignore the constricting feeling in his chest when he pulls his hands out of Gon’s grasp. “I’m not going to feel better just from that!”

“Then…if I do it more?” Gon asks, less gentle and a little more teasing. He blinks in bemusement until Gon catches his hands in his grip again, the confusion turning into bewilderment crossed with embarrassment when Gon presses gentle kisses on both of his palms.

“Oi!” he yelps, shoving a foot in Gon’s chest before he can try anything more. Gon grunts at the move and he almost feels sorry; _almost_ , until he sees the cheeky grin on Gon’s face. “Do you really have no shame?! Jeez!” he grumbles, loudly, trying to cover up the quaver in his voice and the tremors of his hands when he hides them in his pockets.

“I was just trying to make you feel better,” Gon reasons, patting at his chest to remove the dust that got onto his shirt. “Did it work?”

“As if something like that would work,” he says snippily, still annoyed at having been caught off-guard by something so stupid as a  _kiss_. “And you shouldn’t kiss my injuries, idiot. What if you ended up making it worse? Your saliva has a ton of bacteria; god knows how bad it’d have gotten if you kissed at a place that wasn’t covered by the bandages.”

Gon looks horrified at the possibility, and he bites back a laugh. It wouldn’t have gotten all that worse, honestly, considering how bad it already was. (It’s still fun to mess with Gon, though.)

“I’m sorry,” Gon says, looking sufficiently apologetic when he bows his head with trembling lips. “I didn’t think-”

“You don’t think very much,” he interrupts, smirking when he gives Gon a little kick in the side.  Gon makes a face at the kick but doesn’t dodge it, most likely thinking that he deserves it after what he’d ‘done’. “Because if you did, you’d know that I was kidding.”

Silence.

“… _eh?!_ ”

He laughs, cheeks stinging from how widely he’s grinning at the shocked look on Gon’s face. “So you were lying? That’s mean, Killua!”  Gon says, looking offended at having been fooled by such a tiny lie. “I was really worried!”

“And you don’t have to be,” he says with an amused smile, hand instinctively coming up to flick Gon in the forehead, until he remembers that it’ll only hurt him worse. Instead, he raises a knee and nudges Gon in the side like he’d done before with one of his feet. “I’ll be fine. I can withstand any pain, remember?”

“But…but I don’t want you to be in pain because of me,” Gon mumbles, frowning as he pats the knee nudging at his side. “I don’t want to be like your family, Killua.”

“Trust me, you’re not,” he assures Gon. “You didn’t mean to hurt me, for one. You’re just,” he trails off, unsure of how to word it. There are far too many words he could use to define Gon, so many things he could say but wouldn’t want to for fear of overwhelming him, but there was no one thing that could mean everything. “You’re just  _you_ ,” he says while trying not to clench his fists, the words he’d ended up choosing a pitiful representation of just how much Gon  _means_  to him.

“Is that a good thing?” Gon asks, staring up at him with wide brown eyes. He smiles and he hopes it looks amused instead of-

_affectionate, soft, devoted, “I love you” unspoken, and—_

\- anything more than what he wants himself to show.

“Who knows.”


End file.
